Weeping for a Night
by Leslie Sholly
Summary: What happens when you hide your feelings for too long?


TITLE: Weeping for a Night (Part 1 of 1) AUTHOR: Leslie Sholly E-MAIL: PennySyc@aol.com DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, with my name and address attached. SPOILER WARNING: This takes place right where we are in Season Six, but no particular episodes are mentioned. RATING: R (for language) CLASSIFICATION: SRA KEYWORDS: MSR SUMMARY: What happens when you wait too long to reveal your true feelings? 

DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of these characters. Chris Carter, Fox, 1013, and the actors themselves have that honor. Please forgive me for attempting to make them my own. 

FEEDBACK: Please, I beg you! PennySyc@aol.com (Leslie) 

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a companion piece, by request, to "But Then Comes the Morning," but it can certainly be read independently. 

Weeping for a Night by Leslie Sholly 

I have been to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and I have lived to tell the tale. 

I have accompanied those I love to the Valley's brink, bade them good-bye as they left to travel that road one can only walk alone. 

I have said my good-byes, and I have been strong, always strong. 

But there comes a time when even the strongest among us must falter, when that which has upheld us is ripped away and we are left to face the emptiness alone. 

That time had come for me now, as I held a telephone receiver in suddenly limp fingers and listened to A.D. Skinner as he told me that my partner was dead. 

************************************************ 

I had spent that day with my mother. I often found myself traveling on the weekends, chasing monsters with Mulder, and I hadn't had much time to spend with Mom lately. So this was Girls' Day Out, like she and Melissa and I used to do sometimes when we were teenagers. 

We went to brunch at Houlihan's and shopped until early evening at Georgetown Park, and we had returned to her house to eat a light dinner and watch her favorite sappy movie, "An Affair to Remember." 

The answering machine was blinking frantically when we returned to the house, and Mom went to check the messages immediately. There had been too many tragedies in our family for her to be relaxed when it came to telephone calls. 

First came a message from Tara: "Hi, Mom. I got my weekly letter from Bill today, and I was going to read it to you. I'll be home all night if you want to give me a call. Matt says, 'Hi, Grandma!'" We both smiled at that one. Then Mulder's voice, "Hey, Mrs. Scully|! Sorry to bother you, but I need to talk to Dana and I thought she might be with you. If you hear from her, could you have her call me? Thanks." I shook my head and traded smiles with my mother. No doubt Mulder had some bizarre theory to bounce off me, something that could not wait until Monday. Yeah, right. Of course, I would call him back. I always did. But not until after the movie. Next message was a friend of my mom's, wanting to set up a bridge date. I zoned out on that one, wandered into the kitchen to start dinner. 

Then my mom called my name. There was a note of anxiety in her voice that frightened me and I ran back into the room. "Mom? What's wrong?" 

She hit the replay button on the machine and my boss's deep voice filled the room. "Mrs. Scully? This is Walter Skinner. I apologize for disturbing you at home. I am trying to reach your daughter. There has been an incident and it is urgent that I speak to her as soon as possible. Please give her my message or call me if you know where she is." He ended the message with his cell phone number. 

I took the phone from my mother's extended hand and automatically dialed the number. The wait for an answer was interminable. Life seemed to be moving in slow motion. I could hear every heartbeat, feel every breath. "Skinner," he answered at last. 

"Sir?" My voice sounded high pitched and strange, like someone else, I thought distractedly. "This is Scully. I just received the message you left for me here at my mother's." 

"Scully." His voice lacked animation, was heavy with some emotion I could not, did not want to name. "Is your mother with you now?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Agent Scully--Dana--I have some very bad news. I am at Georgetown Hospital. Agent Mulder was brought in earlier this afternoon. I am so sorry, Scully. He's dead." 

In a daze, I handed the phone to my mother and sat limply down on the couch. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, certainly couldn't cry. I could hear my mother's voice from a distance but I neither knew nor cared what she was saying. Then she hung up the phone and turned to me. There were tears in her eyes but she was holding them back as she tried to gauge the state I was in. 

"I'm cold, Mom," I said. It was true. I was shaking. She pulled the afghan from the back of the couch, wrapped it and her arms around me and cradled my head on her breast like a child's. 

"Oh, Dana. Oh, honey. I am so sorry." She rocked me back and forth, crooning softly in the way that mothers do when their children are in need of comfort. Somewhere deep inside where all my feelings were hidden, wrapped up inside the shell where I kept them, I was grateful. But on the outside, I just felt empty. Hopeless. Lifeless. 

When I had thought about the possibility of Mulder dying-- and in our line of work, who doesn't think about it--I had always imagined myself dealing with it by being strong, by doing all the things that had to be done, by holding my feelings inside like I usually did. There were arrangements to handle, phone calls to make. I was Mulder's next of kin and I was responsible for taking care of these things. But now that the worst had really come to pass, I realized too late that it had been Mulder's strength, the knowledge that he was there for me, that had upheld me through my sister's death, my daughter's death, my cancer. What was I going to rely on now? 

I had my faith, of course. It was a precious gift and I was glad I had reclaimed it over the past few years. I firmly believed that I would be with Mulder again. But would it be enough to see me through? Would it give me the strength I needed to get through this day and the next and the next? 

My mother roused me from my lethargy. "Dana, sweetheart, do you want to know what happened?" 

"No. Doesn't matter." Of course I would want the details at some point. But later. For now, my abused mind had all it could do to grasp the idea that Mulder was gone. 

"Honey, I don't know what would be best for you right now, but Fox is still at the hospital if you would like to see him." 

The last time I thought Mulder was dead, there had been no body. I think, looking back, that one reason I didn't fall apart was because some part of me, in outright defiance of all surface evidence, held out hope that as long as there was no body, he might not be dead. I knew that seeing him now was a crucial part of accepting what had happened, so I agreed. I let my mother walk me to the car. She even had to buckle my seatbelt. My mind was a blank on the ride to Georgetown, and she had to lead me into the hospital like some kind of sleepwalker. We found Skinner somehow and he took us to the room where Mulder lay. 

"Let me come in with you, Dana," my mother said, looking at me with concern. I had yet to shed a tear. 

"No. By myself," I said with difficulty. And I walked in. 

He looked peaceful, lying there. There were a couple of bruises on his face but nothing too bad. For a moment, the pathologist in me took over and I wondered what sort of trauma had caused his death. But only for a moment. 

I have seen so many bodies. I can be cavalier about death at times. But this was Mulder. My partner. My best friend. The man who loved me. Sure, I knew that. Hadn't he tried to tell me, to show me? But fucking ice princess, ice bitch that I was, I would never let him in. Pretending I thought he was teasing when he asked me to marry him, that he was drugged up when he said he loved me, that the kiss the frigging bee stopped before it could begin meant nothing, should be forgotten. Oh, I knew Mulder loved me. And I knew I loved him. And that I had waited, had sat on that knowledge, had never told him--that was unforgivable. And now he was gone. 

"I love you, Mulder," I said out loud. But it was too little, too late. He couldn't hear me, and even if he could, our chance was gone now. I would never know the feeling of his lips against mine, would never wake up in his arms as I so often had in my dreams, would never see the look on his face when I declared my love at last. 

Why had I waited? Why had I assumed time would stand still for me, that I could bend it to my will, that we would always have all the time in the world to work on our relationship? "I'm sorry, Mulder," I whispered. And I walked out of the room. 

I walked past my mother and I walked past Skinner. My mother followed me at a distance as I walked out of the hospital and into the warm spring night. I walked past classroom buildings, past the graves of Jesuits, past massive stone dormitories, until I reached the campus chapel. 

There was no Mass going on. The lights were dimmed and my mother and I were alone. I knelt in the back of the church and tried to pray, not for Mulder but for myself, for the strength to go on. Mulder didn't need my prayers anymore. He was in a better place, I knew that. His life on Earth had been nothing but Purgatory and he deserved a ticket straight to Heaven. 

If Mulder had been the one left alive, he would have reacted to my death by putting a bullet in his brain. I had no doubt about that. And I wished with all my heart that I could take that path. But I couldn't. I couldn't do that to my mother, for one thing. And suicide was definitely against my moral code, for another. Somehow I would have to face every day from now until my own death, waking up each morning knowing that Mulder was gone, and remembering my guilt and my regret that he had died without words of love from me. 

My mother knelt beside me and put her arms around my shoulders and all at once I was crying at last, crying for Mulder, for myself, for all that we had lost, for all we had never had. "I never told him, I never told him," I whispered over and over, brokenly, through my tears. 

The church bells began to ring, disturbing my grief. On and on they rang, until I opened my eyes, raised my head from my wet pillow, and looked stupidly at the bright morning sun shining on my alarm clock, which I had accidentally left set for 6 a.m. 

It was a dream. It was only a dream. 

Without a thought to the earliness of the hour, I grabbed the phone by my bed and dialed Mulder's number. As the phone rang and rang, my heart filled with unreasoning dread. What if my dream had been a premonition? What if Mulder really were dead? He's rubbing off on you, Dana, I said to myself. But when his voice finally came on the line, no sound had ever been more beautiful to my ears. 

"Mulder, I'm sorry if I woke you. I know it's early and it's Saturday. It's just that--I know it sounds silly but I had a really bad dream last night and I just needed to make sure you were O.K." 

"Scully, that doesn't sound silly at all, but what I'm getting ready to say might. Just hear me out, O.K.? I am not drunk, I am not on drugs, I am not delusional. I know what I'm saying and I'm being perfectly serious. Scully, *I love you.*" 

My heart stopped beating. I searched my repertoire for a snappy comeback. Then I thought, this is second chance time, Dana. How many people ever get a second chance? Drawing a deep breath, I said, "Mulder, I love you, too. Now get over here! Please?" 

An audible sigh of relief emanated from the other end of the line. The next thing I heard was a clatter as Mulder dropped the phone. Smiling, I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer, thanking God for second chances. 

"Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning." 

Psalm 30, verse 5 

THE END 


End file.
